Gukesh's impeccable understanding | D.Gukesh vs Alexei Shirov | Chess Olympiad 2026

The world champion Gukesh Damaraju nods his head to his trainer Grzegorz Gajewski and makes his way into the playing hall. This is the 4th round of the Chess Olympiad 2026, and Gukesh is going to take on a very, very interesting opponent, Grandmaster Alexei Shirov. Now Gukesh has played pretty good until now. He's on 2.5 out of 3. And he's going to play his fourth game here against an absolute legend of chess. Alexei Shirov has played multiple world championships and candidates and all of these, and he has you know performed very well. The little girl comes in and gives Gukesh a small gift before the game. Was very very happy. With that, and Shirov is known for his attacking brand of play. In fact, the book that was written by Shirov was called Fire on Board, and there you see him arriving. They've played before at the Chess Olympiad in 2022, and now once again India versus Spain is the battle. In fact, it's interesting that when India played Spain. Gukesh versus Shirov was the top board encounter, and this time it's happening on the 4th board. That's the last board. The players are ready, and this, dear friends, is the binary game of the day. You can check the pinned comment to know more about binary. Shirov starts. Starts the clock and let's see what Gukesh's first move is going to be. Gukesh can open with d4, e4. Sometimes he also plays knight f3. He goes pawn to e4. And Alexei Shirov responds back with the Sicilian, inviting Gukesh for a full-blooded fight. Knight comes out to f3. And pawn to e6 played. And Gukesh has 1 hour 31 minutes, and the next move he plays after almost 8 minutes of thought. He brings his knight out to c3, and you can see Shirov also takes a lot of time, almost 8 minutes, before playing a6. So both of them trying to surprise each other. To have a fresh game. Now Gukesh pushes the pawn to d4. We have the Open Sicilian. Pawn takes pawn, knight takes pawn, and queen c7 leads to the Sicilian Kan. But knight c6 is more of an old line that is played. Gukesh takes, knight takes c6. This move does help black strengthen their center because after bxc6, the pawn moves closer to the center. You want to push the pawn to d5, but on the other hand, it's very quick development for white. Knight c3, bishop d3. You want to castle quickly, you can do that. He brings his pawn to d5, and now quickly short castling here. Well, the main way to play in this position is Knight f6, Bishop to e7, and short castles. That is how Black would continue. Rook e1 played here by Gukesh, and Black goes Bishop to e7. The point of this move is to push e5. I mean, white would at some point push e5, and he does it straight away. Knight to d7. And this is a very interesting position because look at it— white has space, white has a beautiful bishop, the queen ready to land on g4. So what does black have in return? By the way, knight a4 played by Gukesh. The main thing that black has is a very strong center with c5 coming up. The bishops are well placed, and maybe castling is not the best idea. You can wait. Knight a4— the plan is to push the pawn to c4 to hit black center. Queen comes out to c7 by Shirov. You can see him getting himself a cup of black coffee. And now Gukesh brings his queen into g4, attacking the pawn on g7. Goes g6. I guess more in his style would have been the move g5. You can't take it because of Rook g8, so could have been nicer, but g6. And now Gukesh plays b3. The pawn moves forward to c5, and I think one of the main moves here is c4, just clamping down on the c5 pawn. But he goes Queen to g3. And by the way, notice that after instead of this, if you would have taken knight e5, then rook takes e5, queen takes e5, and bishop b2 would have won a lot of material. So c5, queen g3, c4 played by Alexei Shirov, and Gukesh goes back bishop to f1. We have the bishop coming out to b7 and bishop at c Stopping black king from castling. Black's position is looking pretty interesting. He goes bishop b4, trying to provoke the pawn move to c3, and he plays it. Pawn to c3. Now the knight cannot come back, and the bishop on a3— very provocative play here. By Shirov. You can trap the bishop with b4, but your knight would also be little loose. He takes on c4. Again, a very Gukesh way of playing this position. By, you know, taking here, he's allowing black to take back and open up this beautiful bishop. But on the other hand, he gets the open b-file and always counterplay. So This is what Gukesh is very good at. He measures the imbalances, which one works for him better than his opponent. Bishop comes to d5 and queen to f4 played, just improving the position of the queen. Rook to c8, also keeping an eye on the c4 pawn which is a bit weak. He comes back, knight d2. Gukesh would love To swivel his knight to the kingside, and f6. Shirov takes on the charge here. No queen trade, says Gukesh. I don't want to take and allow you to trade my queen. He plays queen h4. f takes e5 taken. Now notice you can't take with the knight because f6 is hanging. So bishop g7. If you move the rook, h7 is hanging. So he goes bishop e7. Attacking the queen. The queen goes back, and now yes, Shiro finds another good move. He is sacrificing an exchange to preserve the h7 pawn. Rook takes h8, and now slowly and steadily knight to d1 with the idea of knight e3 and knight g4 in the air. He goes pawn to e4, and one of the ideas in this position is to bring the knight to d3. Goes knight e3, and I think knight e5 is a mistake, but Gukesh has to find a series of accurate moves now, starting with rook bd1. He finds it with just 3 minutes on the clock. Well done! Knight jumps to d3. And now you take the knight. Bishop takes d3. If you take, e takes d3, then I take on d5 and e6 square is loose. So c takes d3 taken. And now a very important pawn breakthrough that Gukesh must have foreseen to go in this direction is pawn to f3. That just simply breaks everything in the position, and Gukesh finds it. Pawn to f3 played. Bishop c5, trying to pin the knight on e3, but simply King h1. The main problem for black is that this, this entire solid structure is disintegrating, and Gukesh's entire Rook d1, f3 was just immaculate. Takes on e4. Now the d3 pawn is hanging. You can see him there. He plays king g7. He knows that the writing is on the wall because Gukesh now chops off the pawn. He's now a clean exchange down, but more importantly, the rooks get open file, and that's the most important thing. Whenever you have rooks against minor pieces, your rook wants open files. Takes, queen takes, and Gukesh Playing very accurately, Queen g3. He is threatening Queen e5 check. Queen comes into d2 and Knight f1, another powerful move, saving the knight, kicking the queen away, threatening a check. He goes for a queen trade, but that's just almost like resigning the game. Queen takes d6, bishop takes, and he simply now brings his rook, I guess. Yes, rook a1 hits the bishop and also the pawn on a6. The bishop comes back to c4, and we have knight jumping into e3, I guess. Yes, knight e3. You can't go bishop d3 because of rook d1, and you lose a bishop. He goes bishop b3, but now you can simply pick up the a6 pawn. Time is no longer an issue. Bishop to c5, the knight goes to g4. Well, Gukesh gets up. It's move 40. h5 played, and Alexei Shirov is not just an exchange down, he's also a pawn down. I think resignation is incoming soon. Rook to c6 played and resigns there. Plays an excellent game to win. I would say a very well-designed game by Gukesh by bringing his rook to d1 Taking on d5, pushing f3. He just showed great class. And you can see Alexey Shirov there analyzing with his team captain, I believe. And with this important win, Gukesh helped India beat Spain 3-1. And it does feel, by seeing Gukesh in action here, that he's slowly coming back into form. Because in the tournament like Grand Swiss, he was facing opponents who were 2500, 2600, and he wasn't able to Play his best, but here he is coming back into his own, and let's hope he continues that because if Gukesh plays in fiery form on board four, then he would really be the architect of India's great performance at the Chess Olympia 2024. For now, this is Sagar Shah signing off. We are going to leave you with Gukesh exiting the playing hall, you know, meeting with the fans, just. The atmosphere of how it is to be in the biggest gathering in the world of chess, and the world champion walking through all of that. Just enjoy, and see you again in the next round.

This is for one browser. Yeah. What browser? Browser. Browser.

Congrats, Lokesh.

You do it too. Oh my God. Okay. Thank you so much.

Okay, two minutes for Chessbase India, maybe. Two minutes for Chessbase India.

Do it. No problem. This is just. The photo is this. Kind of map. Everything is obviously. Okay, she needs some help. It's okay, it's okay. I can. Okay. I think he's getting all the things. Just one move of white there. Only one move. Great win. I thought I'd try for chess.com. Okay, I know your policy, but I have to ask. I got a great way. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Tumhारे से यकीन होता है? Okay, माफ़ होता है please. Thank you. Perfect. मैं तुम्हें मेरे मेरे माँ की तरफ़ कोई कोई नहीं. It's okay. It's a funny word. Yeah, I want to keep it. Yeah, yeah, it's okay. It's me. One word about the team's win today. Feels good. Can I take it? Thank you. Thank you so much. It's excellent. I love this.

Are you getting some good sleep now?

Yeah. My classmate is 2007. He's really cool to play chess. Can you say something for him? Okay, I will, I will, I will just make him good. Thank you very much. We're gonna catch him. Yeah. Yes. Can I take photo? It's my son. Leo, Leo, Leo.

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Leo, man. Stay, stay. Thank you so much. Thank you.